re's color, but that too, with its
waxen, expressionless petals, had no business there either. It
exasperated him. It looked at him coolly and sarcastically as if that
which happens to a man but once in his life had not come to him.

Aunt McCorkle appeared with the glass of milk. She was a vague Southern
gentlewoman, gentle and faded and appealing. She was just what he
expected the daughter of William Benson to be. He thought of the
middle-aged and elderly Boston dames with their strong profiles and keen
eyes and decisive opinions of reforms and literature and charity. Any
one of them might have put out her arms and have taken Mrs. McCorkle up
in her lap and trotted her to sleep. Yet Ellesworth liked the Southern
lady. Already he felt a queer movement of the heart toward Georgiella
Benson's "relations."

"Is it lung trouble?" inquired Aunt McCorkle sympathetically. The girl
came out of the house at this moment and sat down on the veranda under
the white camellia. She glanced at her guest with interest.

"The doctors think I shall come out all right if I am careful of my
self," replied Ellesworth, evasively.

"It is hard to be sick," said Georgiella sincerely. Illness and death
had touched her so lately and so cruelly that she could not help feeling
sorry for the sick young man.

"I have just ridden over from Sunshine, where I am living now,"
explained Ellesworth again, although his conscience gave him a twinge.
He hurried on: "You see, I'm looking for a quiet place to board in." He
made a diplomatic pause. "The Sunshine Hotel is too noisy, what with
billiards and bowling and late dances; so I rode over here to look
about, and an old lady with a pipe told me you lived here."

"That was Aunt Betsey," said the girl decisively. "But we never took
boarders," with a stately drawing up of her head, "why should she send
you here?"

"My dear," protested Mrs. McCorkle mildly, "the Randolphs of Sunshine
took boarders last winter; and I suppose we could get Aunt Betsey to
cook." She rose to carry away Ellesworth's glass, and beckoned to the
girl to follow her. Evidently the two poor ladies whispered together in
the hall, consulting upon the awful problem suddenly presented to their
empty pockets and plethoric pride. They came out on the veranda again,
and Mrs. McCorkle asked him point blank what his name was. Without
perceptible hesitation he replied:

"Bigelow, madam. Frank Bigelow." The unimagined value of a middle name